Holocaust Scholars Still Grapple with Difficult History

JERUSALEM-Sixty years after the end of the Holocaust, the pieces of the puzzle are still being painstakingly assembled. At Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust remembrance authority here, such work takes on many forms. One of them is academic historical research exploring the why, who, when, and how of the holocaust and its aftermath.

Just last week, a Holocaust scholars' workshop under the umbrella of Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research, drew about 35 academics. They converged for a 7-day conference from a dozen countries including Israel, America, Canada, England, France, Australia, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, and Hungary.

"The goal of everything we do here is to represent the truth," said Estee Yaari, foreign media liaison for Yad Vashem on the final day of the Annual Summer Workshop for Holocaust Scholars, now in its third year.

The final day's symposium was aimed at academic interaction for doctoral research fellows. The six fellows, sponsored by the workshop's cosponsor Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, each presented in-progress doctoral work. The range of topics focused on grass-roots aspects of the holocaust and how individuals and groups either aided Nazi Germany or helped persecuted Jews.

Rebecca Carter-Chand, a Canadian scholar from the University of Toronto, presented the current stage of her work on Christian minorities in Germany and their relationship with Jews during the Third Reich.

One of Carter-Chand's examples is the assistance that Quakers gave to Jews who were rounded up and held for deportation to work camps. In part due to their history of humanitarian service in times of crises, and in part due to their reputation as neutral, some Quakers were able to move relatively freely among Jews in holding areas. The Quakers provided food and moral support, and were also trusted envoys for personal correspondence.

Carter-Chand told of an account she found in her research of Quakers waiting on platforms near trains full of Jews for letters that were thrown out at the last moment. Letters sometimes included material wealth, which the Quakers faithfully delivered.

"That says a lot, that they were trusted to deliver not only letters but also money," said Carter-Chand of the Quakers.

Another fellow who presented her ongoing research, Na'ama Shik, is a Holocaust scholar at Tel Aviv University and affiliated with the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem. Shik's presentation on her work, titled "Jewish Female Experience in Auschwitz-Birkenau," was a disturbing look into the dark world Jewish women experienced in the notorious camp.

Shik pointed out during her 45-minute presentation and discussion that her research is still in progress. She is currently focusing on the issue of women trading their bodies for food to survive, which Shik contends falls under the category of sexual abuse and was relatively rare. But she thinks targeting women's experiences is worthwhile.

"There is still a need to do research comparing male and female experiences in the Holocaust," stated Shik. Her research is based largely on accounts, testimonies, and memoirs written by survivors-both male and female. Part of these testimonies examine the early, postwar period's unvarnished accounts of women and male survivors.

"There is no lesson from their experience-they are just telling their stories," said Shik of pre-1960s testimonies in an interview.

One question Shik poses is whether some of the things women lived through prevented survivors from recounting their experiences as the years wore on and their families grew.

The research being done by Carter-Chand, Shik, and others on the Holocaust is part of an already existing wealth of information on the topic, much of which is housed at Yad Vashem.